"Studying Past Vegetation Dynamics at Continental to Global Scales Through Open Community-Curated Data Resources"

Paleoecological data networks are the primary constraints on pre-1700 CE vegetation dynamics, land cover change, fire regimes, and vegetation-climate interactions. The gathering and compilation of these records is time-intensive. The Neotoma Paleoecology Database supports the Quaternary and global change communities by providing an expert-curated, open-access resource for paleoecological and paleoenvironmental data. Neotoma comprises three interlinked elements: the paleoecological data itself, the services that connect these data to diverse audiences, and the community of people who contribute, steward, and use Neotoma’s data and services. All three are growing and together are enabling a flowering of research into past ecological dynamics at continental to global scales. For example, in North America, a new generation of REVEALS-based land-cover reconstructions suggest a continental-scale mid-Holocene peak in summergreen tree cover and strong physiognomic changes associated with the mid-Holocene hemlock collapse. Globally, late-Holocene rates of vegetation change were as fast or faster as those of the last deglaciation. Global spectral analyses of climate and vegetation variance suggest close couplings at timescales of 150 to 18,000 years-1, including a breakpoint in vegetation turnover that matches a breakpoint between stochastic (‘weather’) and autocorrelated (‘climate’) modes of variation in the atmosphere. Current activities include the rapid growth of the European community under the PalaeOpen initiative and the expansion of the Neotoma data model to support ancient environmental DNA.